Ashley Bedhangings
An online gallery is also available, click here and then choose “Ashley Bedhangings.”
In April 2011, Historic Deerfield, located in Deerfield, Massachusetts, debuted a set of reproduction bed hangings based on a set in its collection dating to about 1765. With the help of nine volunteers, who worked under the 
direction of needlework expert and embroiderer Kathleen Smith, the results of this ambitious project are currently on view in the museum’s Ashley House.
This original set of embroidered bed hangings is attributed to Mary Ballantine Ashley (1744-1827) of Westfield, Massachusetts, who married Sheffield resident Major General John Ashley (1736-1799) in 1769. John’s father, Judge John Ashley (1709-1802), was a cousin of Deerfield’s Reverend Jonathan Ashley (1712-1780). It was this connection to Deerfield that motivated Henry and Helen Flynt, the museum’s founders, to acquire pieces of the bed hangings in the early 1950s from an Ashley descendant living in nearby Northampton, Massachusetts.
It is likely that Mary Ballantine made the set in preparation for her life as a married woman, perhaps a few years before her 1769 wedding date. Ambitious sewing and embroidery projects like this one were not done alone. Ballantine would have had help from her female relatives, friends and neighbors. Not all the elements of this set were newly created either; some of the original curtains incorporated earlier embroidered pieces, including what may be a gown worked into the head cloth! During the eighteenth century, a set of bed hangings like this one might have been described as worked or wrought, a reference and acknowledgement to the decorative but laborious embroidery.
Although decorative, bed hangings like the Ashley set served an important function in 18th-century homes. Bed curtains and a head cloth hung on a high-post bedstead, trapping heat and making cold nights that much more tolerable. Curtains also darkened the immediate surroundings inside for a better night’s sleep and provided a modicum of privacy when bedchambers were shared with other family members or guests. Valences, narrower, shaped pieces of material, attached to the tester or top of the bedstead, helped to hide the mechanics of hanging the curtains, which were suspended by tapes or metal rings attached to wooden or metal rods. Although the bed hangings in Historic Deerfield’s Ashley House are displayed in a second floor bed room (or bed chamber), it was common at this time for first-floor parlors to continue to be multi-purpose, including housing a bed.
The remaining pieces of the set, consisting of a valence, one narrow curtain, a head cloth, and possibly two wide curtains, were made using a bleached, plain weave linen, a traditional textile for use in bedding because of its ease in laundering. The embroidery pattern was next drawn on in ink, as evidenced on the original pieces where embroidery thread loss reveals lines. Following the pattern, a meandering floral and foliate vine motif done in colorful crewel (two-ply woolen) yarns was embroidered in stitches that include New England laid (also known as Romanian couching), long and short, seed, and chain. Samples of the embroidery thread from a valence acquired at auction in 2008 were sent to The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory in York, England, for dye analysis. Results, while not 100% conclusive, suggested that pale woad or indigo was used to achieve the blue; a mixture of weld, greenweed or sawwort with madder produced the orange-red; and young fustic yielded the yellow. While some probate records have been located for this branch of the Ashley family, the bed hangings are not listed among the family’s holdings. These cherished possessions were given to a descendant before an inventory of the decedent’s property was taken.
The most recent addition to this set of bed hangings came in the form of a valence that the museum purchased at auction in 2008. With the acquisition of this piece, the look of the whole set was more apparent than ever. Around this time, Plimouth Plantation embarked on their collaborative project to reproduce an embroidered 17th-century jacket. It was that effort that inspired Historic Deerfield’s own bed hangings project. In 2008, Kathleen Smith of Textile Reproductions in Chesterfield, Massachusetts, was chosen to lead the team of nine volunteers.
To facilitate the project, Historic Deerfield’s Visual Resources Manager Penny Leveritt took detailed photographs of the original bed hangings to aid coordinator Kathleen Smith in adapting the selected embroidery pattern. Smith then drew out the design onto linen, and coached the needlework volunteers in making their stitches. For the sake of simplicity, and a more uniform appearance, the decision was made to reproduce the originals using only the dominant motifs on the newest, coordinated pieces. The results of the project, which took about two and a half years to complete, are stunning. Thanks are due to Historic Deerfield trustee Joe Gromacki, who has generously supported the project and seen it through to completion.
Visitors to the museum can view the reproduction bed hangings in the north bed chamber of the Ashley House.
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